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The obligatory SXSW blog post, year two

Seven days have passed since I returned to Des Moines after the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, and unlike last year, my Storify recap is not finished (EDIT: now it is!)and I have yet to upload any photos to Facebook from the week (EDIT: here they are!).

This year’s trip was an exercise in living in the moment, as much as one can live in the moment while uploading six-second videos on Vine, applying (subtle) filters to photos on Instagram and pushing out hundreds of tweets each day. I chose panels and talks more strategically; I limited my party-hopping to two (or three…) per night; I forced strangers to tell me about their non-digital lives. Most evenings ended at the Driskill, a hotel bar with its own secret entrance.

I tell people that SXSW is not a sustainable lifestyle, and I stand by that statement. Last year, I tweeted that I was leaving my heart in Austin. This year, after many Interactive attendees left a night early, I was ready to go home. But as I try to collect my thoughts from the most insane week of the year, I realize I’m still processing, still working to place the things I learned into the context of my own life. Here it goes: